Angelina Jordan Wiki:User groups
User groups define what "rights" or "permissions" different wiki users have when they visit the wiki. For additional details, see Manual:User rights↗ at MediaWiki.org.
Everyone
Anyone coming to the wiki who has not logged in can view its pages (except some specific "special" pages), including talk pages and edit histories. Such users are sometimes called "readers" to distinguish them from users who can edit the wiki ("editors").
While readers can view the list of changes to any page having an edit history, they cannot view the individual "diffs" (differences between versions of a page) provided by that list. This is to prevent badly behaving bots from hogging system resources by requesting all possible diffs for a page (the number of which increases as the square of the number of revisions made to that page — the most-edited pages here can have hundreds of thousands of possible diffs).
Users
Logged-in users can also:
- create, edit, and move (retitle) pages
- configure their own preferences
- send e-mails to users who have chosen that option in their preferences
- define their own personal CSS and Javascript to be applied when they view pages (see "Appearance" in your preferences)
- view a few more special pages than readers can
- view all of the various "diffs" provided by the edit history pages
Interface administrators
In addition to everything regular users can do, interface administrators can edit pages in the "MediaWiki" namespace, including the sitewide CSS and Javascript pages stored there.
Administrators
Also known as "admins" or "sysops", administrators can do Lots Of Things. (to be written)
Bureaucrats
These users can change the rights/permissions of other users and some Other Stuff. (to be written)
